Taken for a ride

Eriksson didn't deserve, won't see out new England contract

By Brian Glanville, World Soccer magazine

Find out more about World Soccer magazine's online subscription offer.

"I'M HAPPY!" smiled Sven-Goran Eriksson last Sunday, and so he should be. As for the self-abasing, invertebrate Football Association, they should bow their heads in shame.

Eriksson has taken them for the most embarrassing of rides, emerging with an improved, massive £4 million-a-year contract when he deserved to be kicked out.

But I am sure he has not emerged unscathed. His ducking and diving, his wheeling and dealing, his surreptitious negotiations with Chelsea, both last July and as recently as last Friday, have alienated the English football press, for whom he will now be a perennial target.

If Eriksson can see nothing wrong in his discussions with Peter Kenyon, the new chief executive at Chelsea, who can scarcely have made a more misbegotten start, then he lives in a moral -- if that be the word -- universe of his own.

It was the late, deeply unlamented CEO of the Football Association, Adam Crozier, who fatuously declared that Eriksson always kept to his contracts. Of course he doesn't.

Ask Blackburn Rovers, for whom he signed on the dotted line, only to dump them and become the manager of Lazio instead. Ask Benfica, who unlike Blackburn held him tight to his contract to return to them, when he wanted to stay in Italy with Fiorentina.

Eriksson informs us that it is perfectly legitimate for an international manager to respond at least to offers from elsewhere. He is not a stupid man, and must know perfectly well how trust must be eroded by such behavior.

But how good an international manager is he? Oh, yes, the England players want him, as players always do want coaches and managers who pick them. Of course, Gary "The Shop Steward" Neville -- whose pitiful, evanescent rebellion before the Turkey match Eriksson did nothing to condemn -- is shouting the odds in the Swede's favor.

As one who applauded Eriksson's initial appointment and deplored the chauvinism of those who inveighed that no foreigner should manage England, I don't regret my attitude. I would say only that it is a question of which foreigner. The fact is that Eriksson now, as England's manager, is damaged goods.

And how important is he anyway? For a long time he was trailing clouds of glory after England's sensational 5-1 World Cup qualifying win in Munich over Germany, in which they rose from the dead. But how did they eventually qualify for the 2002 World Cup, avoiding a playoff against the Russians by the skin of their teeth? Why, through a desperately late freekick goal against a superior Greek team at Old Trafford, awarded for a nonexistent foul on Teddy Sheringham.

And what happened when they got to Japan? The quarterfinal saw them facing a Brazilian team reduced to 10 men for the last 32 minutes, and failing to get a single shot on goal. At halftime, remarked an England defender: "We needed Winston Churchill and we got Iain Duncan Smith."

Then there's the small matter of Claudio Ranieri and the way he has been humiliated by Chelsea, even at a time when the club found themselves second in the Premiership and in with at least a chance in the European Cup.

Before the recent first-leg quarterfinal at Chelsea, the new chief of publicity, Stuart Higgins, ex-editor of The Sun, was emphatically telling journalists that there was no basis to the stories that Ranieri was being undermined. Yet he accompanied Eriksson to his meeting with Kenyon. Who, let it be said, may still have to answer questions about events that took place under his aegis at Manchester United.

The Tim Howard fiasco just won't go away. There have been further revelations about large sums of money paid to agents who seemingly did nothing to earn them, the latest being an obscure American. It is still surprising that Chelsea should have dropped a perfectly competent chief executive, Trevor Birch, in favor of Kenyon in the first place.

I don't see Ranieri as the ideal manager. Too many of his tactical decisions make scant sense. But his players respond to him, he's been given a difficult hand to play with such a super abundance of stars, and he has faced adversity with dignity, humor and courage. Despite the fact that his position has been so callously undermined.

So will Eriksson stay till 2008, when his absurdly indulgent contract will notionally end? Of course not. There's a get-out clause, even though Mark Palios, who cuts a feeble figure in the affair, won't specify it. Oh, well, the image of a grave and somber Swede was long-since shattered by the hilarious affair with the ever-volatile Ulrika Johnson.

DO managers understand football, I sometimes ask myself? Not least after the supposedly impeccable strategist Arsene Wenger threw away his team's victory over Manchester United last Sunday by incomprehensibly bringing on Pascal Cygan, that long-lost cause, in place of Freddie Ljungberg.

We know what happened then. United attacked on the right, where Cygan was meant to be shoring up the defense in front of his left back, over went the ball to Louis Saha, and in it went for the equalizer. If Wenger felt a substitution was needed at that late point, why on earth should he send on the ever-fallible and vulnerable Cygan?

Time and again he turned to the lanky Frenchman as though determined to prove, if only to himself, that the £2 million fee wasn't wasted. Cygan is a charming, amiable, modest fellow, but such qualities alas, are not enough in major football.

Meanwhile, while Alex Ferguson was quite out of order in whinging on about United's right to a penalty when Ryan Giggs was brought down by Sol Campbell, outside the box, why was there so little comment on the spot kick Arsenal so surely should have had when United keeper Roy Carroll blatantly brought down Jose Reyes?

LIKE Eriksson, I was at The Valley last Saturday to see Charlton beaten by Aston Villa, and thought it perfectly right that he should choose the versatile Villa right back Lloyd Samuel for the squad against Sweden.

Samuel, who as a boy played for the same club as John Terry, Joe Cole and Bobby Zamora, walking out of West Ham with Terry and Zamora as a 14-year-old, is a quick, versatile, effective performer in a position where England have scant cover.

But what of Gareth Barry, who had an excellent game in midfield and was involved in both the Villa goals? I asked his manager David O'Leary about it afterwards. He smiled, said he didn't want to be drawn into controversy, but plainly felt that Barry deserved another England chance. So indeed do I.

ARE Milan invincible? They are scarcely in danger of elimination from the European Cup when they travel to Coruna next week, but last Sunday they escaped defeat by the skin of their teeth at San Siro by modest Chievo.

For most of the game they were 2-0 down. Then Pirlo scored and right at the death, in injury time, the Ukrainian striker Andrei Shevchenko scored to give them a belated equalizer.

NO wonder the FA have protested against the sublime imbecility of the BBC for using, of all horrific people, Don King to advertise their coverage of the FA Cup.

Why, in the first place, Don King, even if it were not for his alarming record: his imprisonment for manslaughter after what police described as an especially brutal killing, when he was allegedly involved in the numbers racket; his lurid machinations as a boxing promoter.

What possessed a BBC birdbrain to believe that King, whatever the moral aspects of the situation, had the remotest connection with football at all, let alone the FA Cup?

For their part, the BBC insist that the FA never protested till now. Given the antics at Soho Square of late, it would surprise me but hardly amaze me. Better late than never, though. They've every right to express their displeasure. Don KING!

Brian Glanville is Britain's most celebrated football writer. He also writes a monthly column in World Soccer magazine. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

His latest book, a fully updated edition of THE STORY OF THE WORLD CUP is available in all good bookshops. Readers of worldsoccer.com can buy this highly acclaimed history of the World Cup and enjoy a 10% discount by clicking here.